Topic: Remembering the Bradford fire

[mersey_paradiso]

RIP the 56 . Thoughts with the families and friends ...

[Crosby Nick]

Such a horrific tragedy. RIP

[Ziltoid]

RIP

Got the local radio on today and they've had quite a few interviews and also commentary from that day.  Just played YNWA.

[redgriffin73]

Looking at that list has nearly made me so sad.

You can see how many members of families were trying to help each other and died due to it.

Truely awful.

Yeah, that's what always gets me the most about it, all the families near enough wiped out.

[mike777]

May they all rest in peace.

[Andy G]

All football fans life was changed because of this and Hillsborough.  RIP to the 56 who perished and thoughts with the families and survivors.  We share your pain.

[idontknow]

RIP 56
A terrible tragedy.

[rafasredangel]

RIP 56, a horrible tragedy. No one should go to a football match and not come home.

The cost of us having safe stadium was far too high.

[PhaseOfPlay]

RIP.

[Alan_X]

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/may/02/karl-oyston-blackpool-tangerine-nightmare-stan-mortenson

Time for police to reopen inquiries

One of the stories about the Bradford City fire brought to my attention over the past week concerns Margaret Thatcher’s visit to Valley Parade eight days after the tragedy in May 1985 that killed 56 people. Her husband, Denis, was also there and someone had to point out to him that it was probably better if he put out his cigarette. Denis stubbed it out, joking to the assembled guests that he did not want another fire on his hands.

There is a highly unsatisfactory feel to the way the people at the top of the country treated this tragedy and the other revelation that West Yorkshire police, along with the neighbouring Humberside and South Yorkshire forces, thought the inquiry was a “seat of the pants affair” merely adds to what has already become blindingly obvious about a five-day hearing where, to quote the police documents, there was a “severe pruning” of witnesses to rush everything through.

Sir Oliver Popplewell, the judge who chaired the inquiry, is clearly aggrieved by any criticism of his work but he has said there needs to be a new investigation now he has belatedly found out that Stafford Heginbotham, Bradford’s then chairman, had a history of at least eight other major fires in the city, courtesy of Martin Fletcher’s book and 15-year fact-finding mission.

Popplewell is adamant another inquiry will clear Heginbotham of any suspicion but neither he nor anyone can say what will come out unless the relevant authorities investigate again and all the police have said publicly is that they will consider any new evidence that is presented to them. It makes you wonder whether they have read Fletcher’s book and the thousands of words of research that should leave anyone with an open mind knowing proper checks need to be made.

Popplewell’s conclusion did jar slightly with his own assertion that Heginbotham’s history was “highly suspicious”. Thirty years on, I have seen a fire report submitted by the Timber Research and Development Association, the one independent body to carry out an inspection of Valley Parade’s main stand before the tragedy, that concluded it was “extremely unlikely that a small source of ignition on its own, say a cigarette in a plastic cup, could have been the primary cause”. The association felt so strongly about it this entire passage was underlined in black.

It is not for me to tell the police how to do their job, but are they going to look the other way until someone drops a pile of these documents through their letterbox? Or is it time they accepted the “mountain of coincidence” presented in Fletcher’s book needs a proper investigation of their own?

Dan Taylor still pushing his friend's book I see. There isn't a 'mountain of evidence' in Fletcher's book (I've read it). There's a lot of coincidence, hearsay, speculation and sadly a lot of misrepresentation of the facts.

[Fordy]

Dan Taylor still pushing his friend's book I see. There isn't a 'mountain of evidence' in Fletcher's book (I've read it). There's a lot of coincidence, hearsay, speculation and sadly a lot of misrepresentation of the facts.

Fletcher been on sky and BBC today of all days pushing his book. Out of order.

However, thoughts are with his family.

[Black Bull Nova]

30 Years

[Alan_X]

However, thoughts are with his family.

Absolutely - no one should have had to go through what he did. It's clear from his book that he's looking for some kind of meaning from a dreadful personal tragedy. It's Dan Taylor that is really pushing this Heginbotham story and sadly alienating Fletcher from a lot of Bradford fans.

[Mad Max]

RIP

[John C]

RIP.

[hoppyLFC]

RIP.

I remember seeing this on the telly the day it happened, still can visualise that guy who emerged in flames, tragic loss of life.

There is a programme about the tragedy on BT SPORT 1 at 9.30 tonight.

[Phil M]

RIP

[Fordy]

RIP.

I remember seeing this on the telly the day it happened, still can visualise that guy who emerged in flames, tragic loss of life.

There is a programme about the tragedy on BT SPORT 1 at 9.30 tonight.

It's free to air on sky, Virgin, free view etc.

It's a short film about it.

[redgriffin73]

It's free to air on sky, Virgin, free view etc.

It's a short film about it.

Thanks for this, didn't know it was available on Freeview.

Edit - doesn't seem to be working for me on Freeview.

[hoppyLFC]

Very sad that film, reading the names of who died, awful to think of parents and their kids trying to stay together and find a way out, only to not make it.

[rafathegaffa83]

RIP

[Ziltoid]

Quite a harrowing documentary on BT.  Absolutely unbelievable how quickly that fire spread.

[Hanson]

Seems they knew who caused the accident all along.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-32701040

Tragic.

[conman]

Seems they knew who caused the accident all along.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-32701040

Tragic.

I haven't yet watched the documentary, nor have i read the book.
However, the coincidences are outrageous. Is it possible that the Australian guy did cast his cigarette away, unknowingly starting the fire. Yet, the rubbish that it lit was put there intentionally, not to start a fire with people in the stadium, but perhaps to do so afterwards, considering the stand was to be demolished straight away.

[Ziltoid]

I haven't yet watched the documentary, nor have i read the book.
However, the coincidences are outrageous. Is it possible that the Australian guy did cast his cigarette away, unknowingly starting the fire. Yet, the rubbish that it lit was put there intentionally, not to start a fire with people in the stadium, but perhaps to do so afterwards, considering the stand was to be demolished straight away.

On the BT doc Peter Jackson admitted that when they swept the stands they'd sweep all the rubbish through the cracks and holes, itd been going on for years. Just an accumulation of rubbish built up.

[Hanson]

I seem to remember there were traces of rubbish like newspapers going back decades found

[Euskadi]

RIP what a horrible way to go.

[Alan_X]

Seems they knew who caused the accident all along.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-32701040

Tragic.

If you read the Bradford fan website it is old news. There's no doubt about cause of the fire and the way Fletcher's book has been peddled is appalling.

[Alan_X]

I haven't yet watched the documentary, nor have i read the book.

In which case how can you make the following statement:

However, the coincidences are outrageous. Is it possible that the Australian guy did cast his cigarette away, unknowingly starting the fire. Yet, the rubbish that it lit was put there intentionally, not to start a fire with people in the stadium, but perhaps to do so afterwards, considering the stand was to be demolished straight away.

I've read the book and done a bit of background reading. There aren't any coincidences. The way the fire story has been pushed is utter bollocks. There were some fires in Bradford, some had some connection to Heginbotham but some didn't. None of them had any actual similarities to the stadium fire, despite what the headlines say and the cause and background to the fire is well understood.

The rubbish wasn't put there intentionally. Where on earth did you get that from? And why would you set fire to a stand that was about to be demolished? It's ridiculous.

Before people repeat bollocks they should at least do a bit of reading. 

[John C]

Another anniversary for the families and survivors. RIP.

Our thoughts are with you.

[AlphaDelta]

A mate of mine was a Fireman with the West Yorkshire brigade at the time and was on one of the first engines to arrive, he suffered a bit with PTSD which at the time wasnt really a big thing in their job. He rarely talks about it understandably but I vividly recall his stories he shared once over a pint, truly awful and my heart goes out to everyone involved in this tragic event.

RIP.

[planet-terror]

RIP the 56

[kennedy81]

RIP the 56.

This was a piece from the Observer a couple of years back. Tells the story of Martin Fletcher who lost his Dad, his uncle, his grandad and his little brother at Bradford. He then had the misfortune at being at Hillsborough too.

For some the nightmare of Bradford fire remains

Nearly 30 years on one fan lives with disaster that killed 56 fans, writes Daniel Taylor

A few months back an old friend of mine put a photograph on Facebook that, for those of us who know his story, was both beautiful and tragic.


His name is Martin Fletcher and the picture was of him and his brother, Andrew, at Christmas 1984. Andrew is 10 at the time. Martin is older by a year and, without a doubt, the most resilient and courageous person I know. Reading his words brought a profound kind of sadness. "Should be celebrating our kid's 40th today," he had written. "Happy birthday bro."

Martin went to my school but talked with a different accent from the rest of us. He and Andrew had grown up in Yorkshire, in a family of Bradford City fans, before moving to Nottinghamshire because of his dad's work. A few months after that photograph was taken three generations of his family were at the game when, on May 11, 1985, an inferno tore through Valley Parade and killed 56 people.

They had seats in the wooden stand and, when the smoke started licking through the floorboards, they were among the crowd ordered by police to the back, not realising the exits were boarded up or padlocked. When the fireball erupted Martin somehow got through the flames and was dragged over the wall at the front of the stand with his clothes, already smoking, about to catch light and his baseball cap melting to his head.

His dad, John, 34, uncle Peter, 32, and grandfather Eddie, 63, did not get out. Nor did his little brother. Andrew was the youngest victim of Bradford, three weeks after his 11th birthday. That photograph was among the last to be taken of him.

When Martin was well enough to come back to school, his hair was charred and the blisters on his ears still looked raw. Some of the kids - and, bloody hell, there really is nothing crueller than children - used to make jokes about him, often to his face. At other times you would see him sitting by himself, flicking through the scrapbooks of photographs and newspaper cuttings that he had made of the disaster.

On a geography field trip six years later we were woken every night by the screams of his nightmares. More than once - frequently, in fact - I have wondered how he possibly summoned the courage to go back to football. Yet I remember asking Bobby Charlton a few years ago how he could get on a plane again after the horrors of the Munich tragedy and he explained that football shaped his life so he just had to get on with it. Martin would offer a similar reply and I'm reminded of something his mother, Susan, a woman of immeasurable strength and dignity, once said about it: "He's lost so much, how can I take football away from him as well?"

So Martin went back to football and he kept going back even though, four years after Bradford, he was at Hillsborough to see his adopted team, Nottingham Forest, play an FA Cup semi-final against Liverpool and watched the full horrors of the crush in the Leppings Lane end. Martin hyperventilated after that match. When he was reunited with his mother he cried in her car and asked why two catastrophes had been allowed to happen this way, one after another. And that question, a quarter of a century later, has still never been answered.

A lot of people reading this might not know, for instance, that two days after Bradford the then Home Secretary, Leon Brittan, promised Parliament "there is no question of putting up a fence that would create a trap".

Did you know as well that after the Ibrox disaster in 1971 the Safety of Sports Grounds Act was introduced, anticipating fires and including regulations that wooden stands should be capable of evacuation in two and a half minutes, that all combustible material must be removed from beneath them, all voids sealed and no one should be more than 30 metres from the nearest manned exit?

None of these conditions was met at Bradford. The government had indefinitely postponed their introduction at lower-division grounds on the basis they did not bring in large crowds and just stop to think about what that says about how football was regarded in those days. Imagine, say, the outcry if public-safety legislation were abandoned for other buildings - the cinema, theatre and so on - where there were much smaller numbers.

Bradford is described sometimes as the forgotten disaster and plainly that is wrong when the supporters of Hull City and Arsenal took it upon themselves to choreograph a minute's applause in the 56th minute of last season's FA Cup final. It is true, however, that for a long time Bradford's way of dealing with it was to clamp their jaw shut and stare ahead. Anniversaries would pass without even a mention in the programme. The team did not wear black armbands. There was no minute's silence and the memorial plaque outside Valley Parade did not go up until 2001, 16 years after the disaster. The club, for many years, did not even send anyone to the annual memorial service in Bradford's Centenary Square.

The FA has just announced the 30th anniversary will be marked by a minute's silence before every game in the country and, nearer the date, we will hear a lot more about May 11, 1985. There was a time, however, when that would have been the last thing the club wanted.

"We have our own way, perhaps a very Yorkshire way, of living with it," Jack Tordoff, who had taken over as chairman, said on the third anniversary. "It may not be everybody's way but it's ours."

Fair enough. Nobody wants to be told there is a right or wrong way to grieve but attitudes have changed over the years and it does strike me that maybe there were people at Bradford who actively wanted us to forget about it, judging by the scale of negligence and mismanagement that led the coroner to admit, in retirement, he had given serious thought to pressing manslaughter charges.

Bradford might not be the forgotten disaster but what is often forgotten is that the club received three different warnings, two from the Health and Safety Executive and another from the county council, from 1981 to 1984, about the potential fire risk created by a mountain of litter rising beneath a timber structure.

It can also be forgotten that the public inquiry started on June 5, so close to the tragedy that most of the victims' relatives did not have the strength to attend. It lasted a mere five days and concluded that the fire was probably started by a discarded match, a cigarette or pipe tobacco. West Yorkshire's chief fire officer admitted the authority had received its own warnings but never inspected the stand and, to offer some idea about how long this deathtrap had been forming, there was an old copy of the Bradford Telegraph and Argus found among the debris, dated November 4, 1968.

Yet there was no independent investigatory police force appointed and, astonishingly, the people who were running the club received so much public money to rebuild the stadium they eventually admitted they had come out with an extra £200,000. The chairman, Stafford Heginbotham, sold his shares in 1988 to Tordoff, previously his vice-chairman, for a £370,000 profit. Tordoff sold out two years later for another "decent profit" of around £300,000. Valley Parade had been a ticking time bomb on their watch and it is amazing, looking back, that the media did not ask more questions, not just locally but right to the top of the country. Bradford, like Hillsborough, was not just a national disaster; it was a national scandal.

Martin did eventually start watching Bradford again and renewed his love for the club. Before then he would stick to Forest and I'm sorry to say the press, despite the "Bravest Boy in Britain" narrative, were insensitive in the extreme, doorstepping him at home and even turning up at our school after Hillsborough.

He tells a story about one day, in the Junior Reds section at Forest, when one of his mates' dads appeared and tried to take a group photograph. We have that picture and it shows Martin, the poor kid, ducking down, instinctively covering his face with his programme, while everyone else is smiling or waving. Yet he is still going to matches, almost three decades on, wearing a Bradford shirt with the number 56 on the back.

[fowlermagic]

RIP as it seems just like yesterday Saw a documentary on it a few months ago and could not believe how quickly the fire spread through the stand. Fans around the ground were chanting away at first thinking it was a minor incident and next minute they were in absolute shock. Sad sad day for everyone involved. Tragic.

[Andy @ Allerton!]

RIP

[only6times]

Terrible , terrible day.

[Zeb]

May something like this never happen again. RIP.

[mersey_paradiso]

RIP the 56 , will remember forever John Helm's commentary and the awful scenes .

[redgriffin73]

Just horrific. RIP.

[deFacto please, you bastards]

RIP poor souls.